Submitted by Having Michael Dell back at the helm of his namesake company hasn’t paid any quick dividends when it comes to market share. According to Gartner Research, Dell continued its slide both in the US and worldwide during the first quarter of 2007, while HP opened up an even-wider lead. Interesting in these results is that you can clearly see that Apple’s strongest market is still the United States.
Dell’s been back at the helm what…all of 2 months? Things can’t be expected to turn around immediately just because the person bearing the company’s last name shows back up for work.
I do feel that things will turn around again for Dell, but more in the 6-12 month timeframe. IMO they make the best business laptops around, plus I just like Michael Dell for some reason…he’s got spirit.
Well it is clear that offshoring manufacturing of computers/laptops/servers and all of the hardware does not equal making money hand over fist.
IMO being global does not equal success nor does having everything in China.
Of course it doesn’t. However, Apple also outsources a lot of their hardware manufacturing to China and they have twice the net income of Dell.
What I meant to say is Dell cannot blame it on the American worker, a union, health benefits and so on and so forth. Since they are totally offshored in China they should be making Billions I guess the lie of blaming the American worker and how wonderful it is to send jobs out of the country looks to be incorrect.
All of that greed came back full circle it appears, all of the offshoring/outsourcing don’t really matter when the ‘end user’ stops buying the product.
Edited 2007-04-20 22:14
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Since they are totally offshored in China
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Hmmm. I guess that big building that we have in Oklahoma City with the name “Dell” on the front must belong to another company. Or perhaps China annexed those particular parcels of land and I just never heard about it.
Silly me. I always thought it was an American call center for Dell Inc.
The call center was moved from India after it was eliminated from the United States to take advantage of ‘slave wages’…
However just because a CEO can never have enough money this one backfired and the center returned after a dismal failure in India.
The hardware is all manufactured/produced in China, remember the US is a ‘service economy’ we do not manufacture anything (Banana Republic).
I will end on this note, it is amazing how companies expect the US consumer to purchase these fine China products when the entire job base is ripped out. But I guess China will buy their own ‘fine’ products produced by workers making around 13 cents an hour.
Oh well, I guess I must be delusional to think we will be 3rd world in less than 20 years as most economic experts have stated.
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Oh well, I guess I must be delusional to think we will be 3rd world in less than 20 years as most economic experts have stated.
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You probably are incorrect there.
This is probably not the place to argue the point, but water flows downhill.
A global economy means that we have to think globally and consider giving up our ideas of sequestering the wealth for ourselves, leaving others to work for what we would consider to be next to nothing.
We in wealthier countries finally have to actually *care* about the health of the *world* economy, and not just about our own, and those few other wealthy nations that we “care about”.
It will be painful for some. But I’ve never understood just how easily people can dismiss the benefits of providing jobs to people who are willing to take them.
Sure, the corps save money. But eventually, the workers in those “third world” countries, thus empowered, will be able to take the next step, and empower themselves further, competing for wages on a level playing field with the rest of us.
OK. It’s not quite that simple.
But off-shoring (from the US perspective) is a first step, and I applaud it.
As a planet, we can no longer afford protectionism.
We’re all in this together, whether we like it or not.
Yeah, I grew up on the original Star Trek. It’s part of my world view. And I believe that we can, some day, achieve some semblance of that future in which the most egregious unfairnesses are eliminated.
I understand the egalitarian motive behind your condemnation of protectionism, unfortunately you forget one part of the equation: the american worker. If *he* doesn’t have a job (because service jobs are off-shored, while virtually all manufacturing jobs have long ago gone to China), then *he* won’t be able to spend as much to buy the products made – you guessed it – in the third world.
Yes, equality is desirable, but you can just turn economies upside-down by removing all regulations and allowing for such savage off-shoring.
It is foolish to abandon protectionism as an economic tool. That’s a one-way ticket to economic ruin. The passage to a free global market must happen *very* gradually, and must also allow for freer movement of workers.
You can’t just say “it’s the third world’s turn, too bad for the first world workers, they can just go on welfare!” In any case, protectionism can also help local economies in third-world nations (which have been for decades inundated with american products, killing off local businesses).
Quite off-topic, but I just thought it needed to be said, especially since we share the same utopian dream of a better, more egalitarian world.
I understand the egalitarian motive behind your condemnation of protectionism, unfortunately you forget one part of the equation: the american worker. If *he* doesn’t have a job (because service jobs are off-shored, while virtually all manufacturing jobs have long ago gone to China), then *he* won’t be able to spend as much to buy the products made – you guessed it – in the third world.
Yes, equality is desirable, but you can just turn economies upside-down by removing all regulations and allowing for such savage off-shoring.
It is foolish to abandon protectionism as an economic tool. That’s a one-way ticket to economic ruin. The passage to a free global market must happen *very* gradually, and must also allow for freer movement of workers.
You can’t just say “it’s the third world’s turn, too bad for the first world workers, they can just go on welfare!” In any case, protectionism can also help local economies in third-world nations (which have been for decades inundated with american products, killing off local businesses).
Quite off-topic, but I just thought it needed to be said, especially since we share the same utopian dream of a better, more egalitarian world.
I agree with both of you — protectionism has its place, but it needs to be focused, and a stepping stone to a more equitable global economy.
The way to do that is to apply protectionist measures against “sweatshop” exporters — those that deny their workers benefits, decent wages, and a reasonably safe workplace. Those manufacturers who can show that their workers are fairly paid, have decent working conditions, protections against abuse and fair benefits, should receive the benefits of free trade.
And no others.
Offshoring has been done almost entirely by corporate greed. I’m absolutely sure that Dell or others don’t choose China because they are concerned about the countries well being.
The thing that really bothers me is the skirting of laws such pollution control, disposal of toxic chemicals used during manufacture, safety of work environment, child labor laws, etc. I think the corporations and governments should be responsible and not ignore issues to save the consumers a few dollars.
However, yes, it does increase the quality of life. The leveling of some of the worlds wealth is not a bad thing.
Almost everything I purchase now is made in China, and some things are high quality, and some things are not. The quality depends on the design, testing and the quality of the materials used. Forgo any of those and the product will suffer, which Dell has shown.
I second that GREED it is nothing more than a CEO who earns more money while the employee gets the boot.
Dell is low quality IMO and they will always be dismal quality, they are trying to lure the Linux community out by ‘acting’ like they are going to install Linux distro’s from the factory.
I would rather buy one and install it myself (not a Dell) and configure it my way. Dell is grasping at straws and they cannot blame it on US wages or manufacturing like I stated earlier. This proves my end point of stating GREEDY CEO rulers worrying about money!
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Dell is grasping at straws and they cannot blame it on US wages or manufacturing like I stated earlier.
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When do the bankruptcy proceedings start?
As I pointed out previously, holding steady in the #2 spot, with 13.9% of *global* market share can hardly be reason for grasping at straws. You’ve just been taken in by all the “Dell’s In Trouble” hype that’s been floating around.
I’m not a Dell fan. But I do know tripe when I see it.
Like you, I prefer to build my own machines for myself, at home.
But when I buy machines for customers, they come preassembled with a warranty and a hardware support contract. And having pre-installed Linux as a choice on more models would be very beneficial to me *and* my customers.
Imagine a society of 5 families. Now imagine 2 scenarios of trade between them:
In the first, the five families work together to each other’s benefit. Each has skills they’re good at, and each has needs they can’t meet themselves. So they each work at what they’re best at. Selling their surplus to the other families and building their wealth in a mutually beneficial way. This is the ideal of a global economy. Everyone produces and everyone benefits.
Now imagine a far different scenario. In this case we have one of the 5 families (We’ll call them the Sams.)who used to be good at working for their own benefit, but now they just sit around watching movies and playing video games all day. Instead of producing things to trade to the other families, the Sams just buy what they want from the other 4 families using their savings. For a while this works great because the Sams had a lot of money saved up. But eventually they start running low on cash. So the Sams start selling their tools and borrowing money from the other 4 families to stay afloat. This worries the other 4 families since they know this can’t go on forever. But they keep lending money to the Sams because they don’t want to lose all that money they lent out. Eventually though, it seems certain that the Sams will be forced to declare bankruptcy. Screwing everyone out of their money and forcing the Sams to live on Ramen noodles. THAT is the reality of the global economy we live in. The current system is perpetuating the self-destruction of the US.
No, you’re not delusional. The US economy is in deep doo-doo. The WWII generation is dying off. And the boomers don’t have the character, skills, or desire to maintain the civilization they left us. So they’re eating the financial seed corn and leaving a future famine for their kids to deal with. Outsourcing is just one more example of their short term party-now, pay later thinking. They don’t care if this country has an industrial base in 20 years. They can’t see more than a single quarter ahead.
I think the Dell desktops are great, but they have to do something with their notebooks.
Could you be more specific?
Erm…
Laptop throwing contest? (To be held alongside the floppy and CD throwing contests)
They could strip the back lights out of the screens and use them as room lighting?
How about selling dodgy exploding batteries to terrorists on the cheap?
or selling the on board speakers to ‘A Clockwork Orange’ enthusiasts.
failing the above, they could turn them all on during the winter as a form of very inefficient heating.
Any further ideas, please post at: http://www.ideastorm.com/. All comments appreciated
I think it’s just the opposite…I live and die by their notebooks but have heard horror stories about desktops blowing up and whatnot. To each their own, but their Lattitudes are incredible bang for the buck.
We have a lot of their desktops at work, and none of them has failed us. The laptops i have seen just don’t feel very solid, and they look awful.
they stop selling crappy parts and actually test things. I have yet to see a dell raid controller that doesnt kill the entire array when 1 disk dies. They are getting a reputation that doesnt bode to well. Not only that HP will support anybodies hardware if it is connected to theirs, its kinda weird, plus they make great servers and their laptops get better all the time.
No kidding, I can’t count the number of failed Dell nodes…..
isn’t real good right now, but unlike Microsoft they don’t have anyway to affectively lock people in. Who know maybe they just need a good ad campaign.
Am I the only one who doesn’t see this as a major crisis?
World wide market share seems to me to be a pretty important metric. And here is how that looks:
http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/1q5.png
Things could be going better for Dell. And I’m not a big Dell fan. But holding steady, in the number 2 spot, at 13.9% of the worldwide PC market suggests to me that Michael is not likely to end his life as a bag lady.
http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/1q5.png
Edited 2007-04-20 21:29
Actually Lack of innovation, copying others technologies or even buying them and no quality improvements for very long time caused Dell to be just another PC supplier.
Their products quality are horrible, even HP quality is horrible but less if you consider they have some Compaq Buisness Laptops in their arsenal, and the most available choices of Printers.
If Dell produces Printers (and they are now) how can they be competitive? HP Printers are readily available, their prices are good for all different demands; their drivers are better and if they are not then other OSs would support them first; now why would I buy a Dell Printer? If I would like more speedier systems then I will buy a Brother or Canon Printer or even Lexmark or probably Xerox. So In my opinion their spreading to enter new markets are Bad; because they didn’t fullfill their first cause, namely the computer.
They started to produce Monitors and God knows what next; if they need to stay well they have to concentrate on something that will distinguish them from the others, which I fail to see.
By default a “Banana Republic” lives and dies on one basic produced commodity (like say bananas… or coffee or sugar cane) so there is no way a “service economy” can be a banana republic unless you want to somehow stretch the definition and lump all services together and pretend that is the same as having an income dependant purely on a single cash crop…
I have had major problems with the almost 400 Dell OptiPlex SX280s my school bought two years ago. So far I have replaced around 100 motherboards with leaking capacitors. After having great luck with the OptiPlex GX1p (P3-450s and P3-600s) and GX240 (P4-1.8), I thought the SX280 would be a shoe-in as a great product. I still checked the reviews for the SX280, and they were good, but I guess a review conducted over a week or two is probably just about meaningless.
I believe the base design is probably fine, but they don’t have tight enough control over their contract manufacturers in China. If the Chinese company can shave a 1/4 of a cent (or less) per capacitor, they’ll be able to pad their profits.
As bad as the SX280s have been, our Latitude X1 notebooks have been great. It made little sense to me until I went to install Fedora Core on it. I did some research and found out that the X1 is a re-badged Samsung. Now it makes a lot more sense. Too bad Samsung doesn’t sell in North America, or I would be buying their notebooks now.
As a result, in the summer of 2008, I’m going to take my order for 500 machines to another vendor. Will me taking my business elsewhere hurt Dell? Probably not, but if everyone else who has had problems votes with their dollars, maybe they will get the message.
I have a Dell machine here from 1999 (P2 450). Yup, built like a tank and fully tested before the sell, never a major problem w/ it. It seems the trends are to get low QA fabs and outsource the core components of the computers to underpaid overworked and abused workers from foreign lands. This is the trend all over the place with computing. What ever happened to quality? You can have both! Let’s hope the reliable computers get built again.
Apple will never be particularly strong outside the US until they adopt a competitive pricing model internationally. And I like Macs…
Dell on the other hand have always shovelled the most popular cack for as little as possible.
We have 500+ Dell desktops. More than half are now Optiplexes(no OS pre installed, wOoT). We also have more than a dozen Power Edge servers. I haven’t ran into many problems with either. Some of the first run laptops, like the first wide screen lats, were heaps and had to be serviced. But other than that, the only gripe I’ve had is the off shore call centers.
Dealing with tech support can be hard enough. Having that language barrier is that much more frustrating and time wasting.
I heard their monitors are good. Best price/quality ratio. I want one and I have never had a Dell.
Dell LCDS were good.
“Dell LCDS were good.”
Second that…I have a 2001FP (3 years old) which is arguably the best monitor I’ve ever owned. I recently purchases the new version (2007FP) as a secondary, and it’s abysmal when compared side by side. On it’s own it would probably look fantastic, but when viewed next to the 2001 it’s incredibly obvious which one is the better monitor.
Not a single dead pixel on my 2001 either. After 3 years.
IIRC Dells monitors are made by Philips.
They have consistently been a clone manufacturer. Dell’s real R&D efforts have been non-existent. Now that the bill is finally coming due, Dell is in a difficult position. One does not make a quality R&D organization over night. The next year or so will be very interesting. Michael Dell seems to be getting a clue, and may try to create an R&D organization that attempts to heavily leverage open source assets.
This is perhaps a misunderstanding? Dell isn’t and never has been a manufacturer. Its strategy is to be a sort of Sears Roebuck. Its a branded retailer, at most an assembler of parts into a configuration, though whether that assembly is done in or out of house is immaterial to its model. Sears in its heyday never did any R&D either.
There’s nothing good or bad about such a strategy, the only question is how big the ecological niche is. It was Michael Dell’s achievement to do it earlier and better than anyone else, and to grasp that in his niche the essential competitive factor was logistics, and so dominate his niche. And expand it also.
If this is your model, there is nothing to do R&D on. Its all happening in other parts of the supply chain, why duplicate?
I don’t see any evidence that the model is losing its viability. Lots of evidence however that execution has been below par.
Dell & EMC both are plagued with bugs in the firmware, component failure and just dismal quality. The input for the next purchases will NOT include anything from DELL for sure. I am not sure who codes the firmware or if they have actually used any of their own hardware (punishment indeed) I would like to throw them off a bridge.
HP actually has R & D without the constant problems that Dell seems to deem unimportant. Also since Sun is developing some really nice hardware for Linux Enterprise distros.
you should…close up shop and give the money back to the share holders!!!!